{"id":133,"date":"2016-02-25T10:53:18","date_gmt":"2016-02-25T15:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baltimorecouplescounseling.com\/?p=133"},"modified":"2016-03-08T13:48:34","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T18:48:34","slug":"the-stages-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baltimorecouplescounseling.com\/the-stages-of-love\/","title":{"rendered":"The Stages of Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imago Relationship Therapy<\/strong> is a theory and therapy of committed\u00a0romantic partnership that was developed by Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, authors of \u201cGetting the Love You Want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Romantic Love is the first stage of love in which we feel ecstasy and infatuation. The chemical Phenylethylalamine (PEA) is released in our brain making us feel wonderful, whole, joyful and alive.\u00a0 When we first met our partner we felt a sense of comfort and familiarity. \u00a0We said to ourselves \u201cI feel so complete with you\u201d, \u201cI know we will live happily together forever\u201d and \u201cI feel like I have known you my whole life.\u201d \u00a0Imago Relationship Therapy believes that we are attracted to our partner because she\/he has\u00a0\u00a0positive and negative traits and characteristics of our parents. This attraction, to what is familiar, takes place on an unconscious level.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, this wonderful stage of Romantic love only lasts for a maximum of 18 months. The second stage of the unconscious love relationship is The Power Struggle. Here we think and ask \u201cWhat happened to the person I fell in love with\u201d, \u201cWhy are you so different from the person I married\u201d and \u201cWhere did it all go wrong?\u201d \u00a0We are now in shock that the relationship has changed so dramatically and we begin to feel angry, depressed, disillusioned and frustrated. We attempt to get our partner to behave differently through shame, blame, and criticism. Of course, these attempts do little to make things better and usually make things even worse. We think \u201cI must be with the wrong person\u201d and \u201cI don\u2019t understand what happened.\u201d \u00a0It is at this stage that couples either split up or stay together living in conflict or in a parallel marriage.<\/p>\n

Imago Theory believes that we all have wounds and unmet needs from our childhood. Our partner has the opportunity to give us the gift of helping us to heal these wounds and have our unmet needs fulfilled.\u00a0\u00a0Making the commitment to the relationship and doing the work will lead to a conscious relationship and eventually a love filled with joy, safety, and passion. The next four stages of love are: Re-commitment, Doing the Work, Awakening, and Real Love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imago Relationship Therapy is a theory and therapy of committed\u00a0romantic partnership that was developed by Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, authors of \u201cGetting the Love You Want.\u201d Romantic Love is the first stage of love in which we feel ecstasy and infatuation. The chemical Phenylethylalamine (PEA) is released in our brain making us feel …<\/p>\n

The Stages of Love<\/span> Read More \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baltimorecouplescounseling.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baltimorecouplescounseling.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baltimorecouplescounseling.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baltimorecouplescounseling.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baltimorecouplescounseling.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/baltimorecouplescounseling.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167,"href":"https:\/\/baltimorecouplescounseling.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions\/167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baltimorecouplescounseling.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baltimorecouplescounseling.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baltimorecouplescounseling.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}